Whether the Angel's Intellect Is Sometimes in Potentiality, Sometimes
in Act?
Objection 1: It would seem that the angel's intellect is sometimes in
potentiality and sometimes in act. For movement is the act of what is
in potentiality, as stated in _Phys._ iii, 6. But the angels' minds
are moved by understanding, as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv).
Therefore the angelic minds are sometimes in potentiality.
Obj. 2: Further, since desire is of a thing not possessed but
possible to have, whoever desires to know anything is in potentiality
thereto. But it is said (1 Pet. 1:12): "On Whom the angels desire to
look." Therefore the angel's intellect is sometimes in potentiality.
Obj. 3: Further, in the book _De Causis_ it is stated that "an
intelligence understands according to the mode of its substance."
But the angel's intelligence has some admixture of potentiality.
Therefore it sometimes understands potentially.
_On the contrary,_ Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. ii): "Since the
angels were created, in the eternity of the Word, they enjoy holy
and devout contemplation." Now a contemplating intellect is not in
potentiality, but in act. Therefore the intellect of an angel is not
in potentiality.
_I answer that,_ As the Philosopher states (De Anima iii, text. 8;
Phys. viii, 32), the intellect is in potentiality in two ways; first,
"as before learning or discovering," that is, before it has the habit
of knowledge; secondly, as "when it possesses the habit of knowledge,
but does not actually consider." In the first way an angel's
intellect is never in potentiality with regard to the things to which
his natural knowledge extends. For, as the higher, namely, the
heavenly, bodies have no potentiality to existence, which is not
fully actuated, in the same way the heavenly intellects, the angels,
have no intelligible potentiality which is not fully completed by
connatural intelligible species. But with regard to things divinely
revealed to them, there is nothing to hinder them from being in
potentiality: because even the heavenly bodies are at times in
potentiality to being enlightened by the sun.
In the second way an angel's intellect can be in potentiality with
regard to things learnt by natural knowledge; for he is not always
actually considering everything that he knows by natural knowledge.
But as to the knowledge of the Word, and of the things he beholds
in the Word, he is never in this way in potentiality; because he is
always actually beholding the Word, and the things he sees in the
Word. For the bliss of the angels consists in such vision; and
beatitude does not consist in habit, but in act, as the Philosopher
says (Ethic. i, 8).
Reply Obj. 1: Movement is taken there not as the act of something
imperfect, that is, of something existing in potentiality, but as the
act of something perfect, that is, of one actually existing. In this
way understanding and feeling are termed movements, as stated in _De
Anima_ iii, text. 28.
Reply Obj. 2: Such desire on the part of the angels does not exclude
the object desired, but weariness thereof. Or they are said to desire
the vision of God with regard to fresh revelations, which they
receive from God to fit them for the tasks which they have to perform.
Reply Obj. 3: In the angel's substance there is no potentiality
divested of act. In the same way, the angel's intellect is never so
in potentiality as to be without act.
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